1809: Meriwether Lewis Slain

On this day in 1809, a co-leader of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Meriwether Lewis, died mysteriously.

One of the greatest explorers in American history, Lewis lies buried in a remote corner of Tennessee where an inn called Grinder's Stand once stood along the old Natchez Trace trail.

It was here, just three years after his triumphant return from the Northwest and his appointment as governor of the Louisiana Territory, that Lewis died from two gunshot wounds. No one witnessed the shooting at the crude inn he was staying at along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee.

A rectangle of rocks marks the site of a log cabin in which Lewis spent his final hours and a short path leads to his gravesite and monument. A preserved stretch of the Natchez Trace that Lewis was traveling before his death passes by the monument and is now frequented by day hikers and visitors to the Meriwether Lewis Monument.

Continued in ... Out of the Past

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Photo: Grave of Meriwether Lewis